December 13, 2009

The Capitol, from Picnic Point.

DSC06116

Yesterday's view. Note the ravages of global warming on the sadly unfrozen lake.

114 comments:

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

Note the ravages of global warming on the sadly unfrozen lake.

Good point. But what will all the Sarah Palin devotees say when Madison is overrun by the millions of Indonesians and Bangladeshis forced to move there after the loss of their own, at least as beautiful and valuable, beachfront property?

Aw, who cares. Screw 'em!

ricpic said...

Well, ya can't blame the trees! They inhale the accursed CO2 and breathe out the blessed O. It's the humans! The human's breathe in the blessed O and exhale the accursed CO2. A spewing plague on the planet they are. Rid Goddess Gaia of their shadow! Do it now! Pass the kill the humans bill now. Not to kick in till 2013, though. To protect Our Cocoa Prince. Praise His name and praise Marx. Forever. Amen.

Bissage said...

Yesterday we moved our potted Japanese Maple into the garage.

Why risk it?

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

Nawww ricpic. Killing trees can't be the answer! We stopped killing s'many damn trees when we decided to stop burning wood and start burning coal instead! A move that just about killed our entire timber-dependent economy!

Kill the dead trees! Kill the dead dinosaurs! Kill everything from the cretaceous period that lived under Sarah Palin's state just a few short thousand years ago and walked side-by-side with Adam and Eve and the liberal snake that gave them the progressive curse of brainpower!

Meade said...

Yesterday - skiing and snowshoeing

Today - swimming

traditionalguy said...

Ritmo...Remember that AlGore has pronounced global warming caused by increasing CO2 ppms to be a law of physics like gravity. One wonder why the increase in Temperature needed to to be Faked in The East Anglia CRU, since gravity has not yet required a conspiracy to fake the experimental data...and yet physics must be what AlGore says it is since ie has been settled forever.

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

Nah - Arrhenius declared as much over a century ago (based on experimental findings that still hold true and that skeptics still haven't managed to find a compelling reason to conclusively declare irrelevant). And the CRU is just one group among many independent organizations that have come to the same conclusion.

Brush up on your history of milestones in the great liberal conspiracy to constrain freedom and halt the continuance of civilization, TG. Don't forget to start with Locke.

Wince said...

Brasileiro,

Drill, baby, drill?

Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.
WSJ, August 18, 2009

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

Hey - At least it's not in Venezuela, Russia or Iran. Or America!

I highly doubt that the administration is hell-bent on exploration at a pace that that outstrips the growth of non-fossil fuel-based sources as a proportion of the mix. I think that's called "context".

Michael Haz said...

RB - Do your part to prevent global warming and turn off your computer. Then forgo heated water and a heated/cooled dwelling. Then give up your car. Also, forget about your TV, your stove and refrigerator. All contribute to global warming.

Only eat food you cultivate in your back yard to avoid having stinky ol' diesel trucks bring it from where it was produced to your supermarket.

Then give up mass transit. It relies either on petrol or coal-generated electricity, Boo! Bad!

Your life will be so much better. It'll be all blue skies, unicorns and seashells.

Anonymous said...

You can see ManBearPig off there in the distance too.

vbspurs said...

It's a Chupacabra.

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

RB - Do your part to prevent global warming and turn off your computer.

You don't know where I get the energy for my computer, how efficient it is, etc.

Then forgo heated water and a heated/cooled dwelling. Then give up your car. Also, forget about your TV, your stove and refrigerator. All contribute to global warming.

Of course, you are confusing the promotion of energy efficiency and renewable energy production with a war on energy itself. Do you not understand the difference between the efficient use of energy, how it is made and energy itself?

Only eat food you cultivate in your back yard to avoid having stinky ol' diesel trucks bring it from where it was produced to your supermarket.

I'm already a step ahead of you by supporting the locavores.

Then give up mass transit. It relies either on petrol or coal-generated electricity, Boo! Bad!

Not on a per use basis - which is precisely the point. Mathematics much, Michael? Boo! Bad!

Your life will be so much better. It'll be all blue skies, unicorns and seashells.

I'm already liking it as much. Much better than a future filled with mercury, coal dirt, and the support of foreign despots. But I'm sure you can convince everyone that these things are somehow really, really good!

traditionalguy said...

Ritmo...That carbon foot print stuff is an aside activity for the legal system running the UN Governance Law of Living Things Polluting. Of course intellectuals like you and me do understand that Carbon Credit Units are the currency issued by the new World Carbon Reserve Bank with George Soros's pictire on them. Only those using energy get initial monopoly money billions of these new CCU dollars issued when the system first re-distributes everything everywhere just in the nick of time. Its a joke.

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

Lord Almighty TG! Is this sort of conspiratorial leapfrogging really what you think or are you making a joke?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Of course, you are confusing the promotion of energy efficiency and renewable energy production with a war on energy itself.

You dont understand MH, there is 'good' energy and 'bad' energy ;)

bearbee said...

UN Armed Response to 'Climategate' question

Daring to Question Al Gore

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

There are also cathodes and anodes, Lem.

reader_iam said...

Well, ya can't blame the trees!

and

Killing trees can't be the answer!

Well, blame 'em or not, in some cases it's been determined that killing the trees IS the answer. See this tale of butterflies, bugs and the killing of trees.

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

What a baby McAleer is! He gets his answer, can't spin his way around the follow-up to his own misunderstanding, and complains about having to let other people behind him ask questions, as well.

titus said...

I have had sex on Picnic Point when I was like 15.

Althouse you may have stepped on some of my babies while out there.

titus said...

I was driving illegally at that time as well.

My parents cut a trip short when I was 15 because my sisters could not find me or my dad's company car.

I was at the gay bar, gee, get over it. It was called Going My Way-how gay is that? It was on the Square in Madison. I think there is nothing there now but it was an incredible bar-three levels, how diva is that? My fake ID was from Nutley, New Jersey.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

So you are saying the Green Lantern's power ring was both good and bad and only by the Lantern's will power (a 3rd force) was he able to be a good guy.

I like the sound of that.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

My fake ID was from Nutley, New Jersey.

LOL

bwt
What the hell were you in Nutley, NJ at 15?

Adele Mundy said...

You would think the bouncer would know something was up when the town listed was "Bust-a-Nutley" New Jersey.

titus said...

I was in Drum Corps and knew a guy from Nutley and he gave me his id.

traditionalguy said...

Ritmo...The East Anglia CRU has carelessly blown the Warmists cover. I wish it were a joke. The warming for a few years up to 1997 was never unusual. The statement that it was unusual is what the CRU crew spent so much time faking. And the the whole charade came crashing down when the last 10 years were cooling years. The use of this crap as science to steal TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS is a mega disaster. There is no joke, but only an Obama as the Joker Poster to remember this near death experience by.

Wince said...

Paul Samuelson, dead at 94.

Agree or disagree, but rarely disagreeable, the man was a humble giant. RIP.

Friendship and Rivalry With Friedman

A historian could well tell the story of 20th-century public debate over economic policy in America through the jousting between Mr. Samuelson and Milton Friedman, who won the Nobel prize in 1976. Mr. Samuelson said the two had almost always disagreed with each other but had remained friends. They met in 1933 at the University of Chicago, when Mr. Samuelson was an undergraduate and Mr. Friedman a graduate student.

Unlike the liberal Mr. Samuelson, the conservative Mr. Friedman opposed active government participation in most areas of the economy except national defense and law enforcement. He thought private enterprise and competition could do better and that government controls posed risks to individual freedoms.

Both men were fluid speakers as well as writers, and they debated often in public forums, in testimony before congressional committees, in op-ed articles and in columns each of them wrote for Newsweek magazine. But Professor Samuelson said he always had fear in his heart when he prepared for combat with Professor Friedman, a formidably engaging debater.

“If you looked at a transcript afterward, it might seem clear that you had won the debate on points,” he said. “But somehow, with members of the audience, you always seemed to come off as elite, and Milton seemed to have won the day.”

Mr. Samuelson said he had never regarded Keynesianism as a religion, and he criticized some of his liberal colleagues for seeming to do so, earning himself, late in life, the label l’enfant terrible, emeritus. The experience of nations in the second half of the century, he said, had diminished his optimism about the ability of government to perform miracles.

If government gets too big, and too great a portion of the nation’s income passes through it, he said, government becomes inefficient and unresponsive to the human needs “we do-gooders extol,” and thus risks infringing on freedoms.

But, he said, no serious political or economic thinker would reject the fundamental Keynesian idea that a benevolent democratic government must do what it can to avert economic trouble in areas the free markets cannot. Neither government alone nor the markets alone, he said, could serve the public welfare without help from the other.

As nations became locked in global competition, and as the computerization of the workplace created daunting employment problems, he agreed with the economic conservatives in advocating that American corporations must stay lean and efficient and follow the general dictates of the free market.

But he warned that the harshness of the market place had to be tempered and that corporate downsizing and the reduction of government programs “must be done with a heart.”


Despite his celebrated accomplishments, Mr. Samuelson preached and practiced humility. The M.I.T. economics department became famous for collegiality, in no small part because no one else could play prima donna if Mr. Samuelson refused the role, and, of course, he did. Economists, he told his students, as Churchill said of political colleagues, “have much to be humble about.”

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

Separate, numerous groups. All reaching same conclusion. Not just CRU. No umbrella organization known as "Warmists". As such, no cover. Get a grip.

Also, this just in:

Arrhenius: Still relevant.

Coolists: Can't predict future data based on continuation of current trends. Can't refute the relevant science that would apply, either.

G Joubert said...

Is there any reason why it can't be said that perhaps the frigid era where the lake froze was abnormal and bad, and that this is an improving condition and a return to normalcy?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Even at the Atlantic they are starting to ask some pertinent questions.

More than one blog is saying this proves that some of the data was falsified. I think that's too strong. But it does look like maybe they got a little too aggressive massaging it.

Is this an anomaly? I hope it is, and think it probably is. But I worry that it isn't. And I'm eagerly awaiting someone at RealClimate or similar to explain why and how this kind of correction got applied
.

Richard Fernandez of Pajamas Media furthers another example of how people fool themselves.

Confirmation bias “is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.” A similar, but subtly different kind of problem affected the Space Shuttle program. Let’s call it ‘incentive bias’. NASA grossly underestimated the probability of a launch failure and set it at 1:100,000 because that’s what it was bureaucratically believed to be. What it bureaucratically had to be. Richard Feynman, who was asked to look into the causes of the disaster knew this number could not possibly be right. But he also knew how powerful an influence a bureaucratic bias could be. There was a consensus on how safe the vehicle was on launch among rocket scientists. But there was only one problem: it had to be wrong.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Another example is one that should be very familiar to Althousians.

The danger/tendency of prosecutors to convince themselves of the guilt of someone to the extent of excluding, hiding, not turning over exculpatory evidence.

See Mike Nifong Duke University lacrosse case.

traditionalguy said...

Ritmo...Keep arguing if you feel like it, but arguing that the burden of proof lies on those who need to disprove the Warmist Myth is as weak as it gets. Using the Tree Rings as an indicater of past cool weather was what they found tp be totally spurious and had to "hide the decline in that tree ring measure" when all of the modern thermometers were showing significant warming. Understand? That showed, if it showed anything, that the warm days were normal when there was no CO2 ppms rising from the burning of fossil fuels...ergo, burning fossil fuels is a wonderful and harmless source of cheap and abundant energy. They had to disprove that and could only do so by counterfeit science producing knowingly faked graphs.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If you say well these are scientists - the are very smart people - they cant possibly fool themselves.

It would be interesting to find out (and perhaps this test has been done already) the relationship btwing IQ and bias.

What if the higher the IQ the greater the susceptibility to a bias?

Ritmo Re-Animated said...

...ergo, burning fossil fuels is a wonderful and harmless source of cheap and abundant energy.

So is the sun and the wind and the waves. And no radiative forcing, like we see on Venus, associated with those. No need to wait until we reach 0.042% of atmospheric CO2 for Traditional Guy to say, "Well, looking back on it, I guess it wasn't such a good idea to subject the planet to this global experiment until I got results that finally made sense to my satisfaction." No lucrative natural resource monopoly to keep the majority of the world's dictators from Venezuela to Russia and Saudi Arabia in business.

But unlike oil and coal, no one can block your access to the sun, the wind and the waves, control its distribution, and charge a fortune for it. Which is why I suppose you are agitating against it. That, and keeping tyrants in business makes America seem more important, by comparison - at least in a symbolic way.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Keep arguing if you feel like it, but arguing that the burden of proof lies on those who need to disprove the Warmist Myth is as weak as it gets.

Its like asking UFO skeptics to prove there are no UFOS; to prove their skepticism.

If you want me to come to the light of climate change you better show me where how and when so that I might - wait, so that we all including the planet might be saved and spared the warming of hell fire ;)

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Something tells me polluting volcanoes are not at the table in Copenhagen.

Warmist are not asking for Volcano caps.. they ask for fuel caps, meat caps and chimney caps.

Volcanoes must be holy in the Climate Change religion.

getitgetit holy hole.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If Co2 is so bad why not upgrade to version 3 ;)

traditionalguy said...

Ritmo...You are upside down again. The wind and solar are 2% to 3% of our needs. The nuclear has always been available since a Nobel prize winner from rural Georgia first refused to go there, and it will now take 30 years to ramp up. The abundant, cheap and readily available coal, oil and gas are here now and are the reason that the USA doesn't need to bow to tyrants except when we chose to. I am ready to hear any plausible reason why we have chosen not to do go massively nuclear nor to drill more on our soil/coastal shelves for the last 30 years, including the sacred postage stamp reserved for drilling in ANWR. As President Sarah Palin will not play it ignorant on using those energy resources like the Bush to Clinton to Bush to Obama boys have religiously played their hands since 1986 relying on the Men from Mecca's friendship. The last argument available is the easy to fool people with presumption that fossil fuels are running out. Oops, that one is also untrue.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Speaking of serendipity

Up above I said..
Volcanoes must be holy in the Climate Change religion.

Notice how Althouse has often pointed her camera in the direction of the Capitol from wherever she happened to be standing.

Proof positive; Althouse is a closeted big government liberal ;)

wv bulness?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"Well, looking back on it, I guess it wasn't such a good idea to subject the planet to this global experiment until I got results that finally made sense to my satisfaction."

Oh I see.. there is a difference of opinion as to how the "experiment" is to be conducted?

Thats one of the problems with you guys, your side keeps changing the story.

wv - imbris

Penny said...

"Notice how Althouse has often pointed her camera in the direction of the Capitol from wherever she happened to be standing.

Proof positive; Althouse is a closeted big government liberal ;)"

Lem, I think peter hoh covered this in that previous post.

"I think it's on the horizon, just a little to the right of center. (The punch line almost writes itself.)"

Penny said...

As for the climate discussion? Personally I'm amused that humans feel they can control the climate when they can't even control how much of their tax dollars go to studying it.

JAL said...

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

Did the article say (did not read it) that GEORGE SOROS is the big investor in Brazilian off shore oil companies?

Nice, huh.

Americans are getting screwed, really, really screwed, when it comes to using our OWN OIL, and the Dems, funded by George Soros are all over how terrible that would be!!!11!1!!! to drill or extract from shale or tap our HUGE natural gas resources ....

But it's hunky dory to make sure Georgie Bazillion Dollar 527 mover and shaker amd US political king maker Soros gets HIS gravy using our funds to develop overseas oil sources.

Fie on all you blind mice.

Mad enough to spit.

(Yoo hoo. Yooooo hoo? Any American investigative journalists working for the MSM doing any grunt work these days? Yooooo hoooo...oo ....)

Michael Haz said...

.....nor to drill more on our soil/coastal shelves for the last 30 years, including the sacred postage stamp reserved for drilling in ANWR.

There already are oil wells in ANWR. I saw them last summer when I flew over ANWR in a helicopter, after riding up the James Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Deadhorse.

The oil wells were drilled in ANWR near the end of WW2 by the US Navy. The Navy was desperate to find additional sources of oil for its fleet in case the Japanese were successful in destroying other sources of crude.

There are non-operating wells that can be seen from the air. They are surrounded by ditched equipment, barrels, vehicles, pipes, sheds and much more materiel that the Navy, our gummint, didn't see necessary to remove. And elk and caribou, by the thousands.

The oil wells in Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay, in contrast, are kept immaculate, utterly free of the smallest amount of waste, debris, litter or spillage. I was there; I was taken into the BP oil fields.

When the Dalton Highway was cut from Fairbanks to Deadhorse in the early 1960s as a road for materiel transport, there were approx 10,000 caribou in the arctic herd, per wildlife biologists' estimates. The 2009 estimate is more than 700,000 caribou. The presence of the Aleyska pipeline, radiating a bit of warmth, has given the caribou herd, and other wildlife the ability to thrive.

Alaska and parts of northwestern Canada are awash in energy resources. We rode past places where the oil was so abundant and so close to the surface of the land that it weeped out of layers of exposes shale. Layers of coal could be seen along cuts in hillsides that were made when roads were constructed.

The American government is foolish not to permit extraction and use of these abundant resources for the benefit of its citizens. Or amybe one political party and its supporters wants America to become a second tier, weak country, beholden to its sworn enemies for life-giving coal, gas and oil. Fools, all of them.

titus said...

I saw Julie and Julia this weekend absolutely loved it.

total chick flick

titus said...

Meryl Streep tour de force, natch.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

..they can't even control how much of their tax dollars go to studying it.

thats nothing.. democrats are going to charge up 2 trillions more on our credit card.

As both sides of the political aisle continue to spend money recklessly on earmarks, massive legislation, and stimulus after stimulus, neither of which have been fully spent by the way, no one seems to be coming out with the obvious solution. Stop spending money.

(bold my emphasis)

wv - splucte - in the way a plutocrazy is rule by the wealthy a splucte is the rule via splurge of the US congress.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I just put that on my Netflix titus.

are you ok titus?

you are not your effervescent self since you been back.

maybe its me.

traditionalguy said...

Titus ...Did you enjoy Julia Child's strong sense of self and tremendous sense of humor? She was a hell of a successful woman, before women had any special equality breaks. She just did it.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I heard that Julia and her husband (or was it her parents?) were active in some fashion (spies I think) for the allies.

Special person very much indeed.

rhhardin said...

Lake Vicki.

titus said...

I love all the republican and McCarthy referencs in Julie and Julia.

Give it to Nora Ephron that commie.

And Julia's sister was played by a dyke, lord help us.

titus said...

By the way Julia Childs was a commie. Just saying.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I cant help in my mind but look for a correlation btwing Tiger Woods and Climategate.

The higher the success of a player like Tiger the higher/riskier the odds of a catastrophic let down.

In Climate change the higher the promise of catastrophe (should we not implement ever draconian measures) the riskier the evidence of less and less anthropogenic warming becomes.

wv - cosolin - AGW ala Cosanostra

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Julia Childs was a commie..

yea but commies were good guys, albeit for a brief period of time.

Just saying.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Lem, I think peter hoh covered this in that previous post.

better late than never ;)

wv - mitype - how insulting!

Guillermo said...

Of course, you are confusing the promotion of energy efficiency and renewable energy production with a war on energy itself.
Aquipesca

traditionalguy said...

Titus...If Julia Child was a commie, then I will surrender to them. She was the daughter of a conservative California Banker, and never betrayed anybody's secrets except the French Cook's.

Penny said...

A day without Vicki is like a day without sunshine, rh. Thanks for sharing.

I love how she juts out her back left paw just a bit in that picture. It's almost coquetish, if that could ever be said about her otherwise regal bearing.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

On Afghanistan

There isn't a question you can ask that I haven't asked.. President Obama just now on 60 min.

Buck passing 101.

MadisonMan said...

Median Freeze data for Lake Mendota: December 20th.

vbspurs said...

Spam, spam, spam lovely spammmmm.

mariner said...

Now that Meade has cleared the ravages of global warming from your driveway and sidewalk, you can get to the lake to take pictures.

titus said...

I am watching Sunday Night Football.

Who amongst us doesnot want to bite Donavan Mcnabb's arms. I so want to do him.

Wince said...

Titus,

Julia Child lived in "fabulous" Cambridge all those years while her cooking program was in production at WGBH Ch2 in Boston.

I didn't know this, but the show was taped in her actual kitchen.

Here's a neat story with pictures on Julia Child’s “Little House in Cambridge".

vbspurs said...

OT: I was excited to read that Houston's new mayor, Annise Parker, was described as a "conservative", which speaks to me more than any sexual orientation ever will. But according to Gay Patriot, she's allied to the Democrats. Not being from Houston, all I care is that the American electorate are electing fiscal conservatives above all else.

titus said...

EDH I live about 4 blocks from Julia's house.

My loft is equally fabulous.

Cambridge is really really fabulous.

David Gergens house if approximately 10 blocks from my loft.

George Bush's personal assistant lives in my building. We park next to each other. He has US plates.

titus said...

No dyke should b mayor of a major city.

That is gross

titus said...

Gay Patriot is gay.

How disgusting.

titus said...

Gay Patriot sucks dick.

Picture it in your mind.

Totally Nasty.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Titus I'm a Patriot fan .. but I'm not gay.. nor have i ever been gay.
I'm asking counsel to review this play.

I love my Patriots.

titus said...

Larry Craig is not gay Lem.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I've never said he was ;)

titus said...

I would not do Larry Craig, thanks for asking.

MadisonMan said...

Thank you all very much for, uh, coming out today.

I still love that Craig starts off his statement that way.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

That was definitely no pun intended MM.

HT said...

Warming more close to home.

The conclusions were clear: Women who took hormone therapy drugs were at increased risk for breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots.

The findings were so strong that researchers stopped a clinical trial in 2002, five years early, because it would have been unethical to continue giving the drugs to women.

But that same year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Medicine and Public Health began a medical education program for doctors that promoted hormone therapy, touted its benefits and downplayed its risks.

http://www.jsonline.com/features/health/38283649.html

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The eagles have a quarterback by committee.

A rare clumber in a recession ;)

Meade said...

Good evening, fellow democrats and lovers of the Obama Doctrine.

"Evil does exist in the world."

"War is sometimes necessary."

Thank you.

Penny said...

Lem, I followed your clumber link, and look what I found!

"Blogger Meade said...
Like motherhood, marriage is way overrated."

That is way too cute. What a difference a year can bring, and good that it was so for Meade and Althouse.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

That is way too cute. What a difference a year can bring, and good that it was so for Meade and Althouse.

I saw that Penny.. maybe marriage is a disavow ;)

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Mcnabb has a crazy glue contract written on his hands.

bozzo.

John henry said...

Or, instead of complaining about global warming, one could go here:

http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/lakes/Mendota-ice.html

And look at the freezing dates of Lake Mendota for every year since 1852.

It was not frozen over by Dec 11 in most years of the 19th century.

In other words, it being unfrozen now is nothing unusual.

John Henry
www.changeover.com

Palladian said...

"Julia Child lived in "fabulous" Cambridge all those years while her cooking program was in production at WGBH Ch2 in Boston.

I didn't know this, but the show was taped in her actual kitchen."

"The" show, if you mean her first, most famous show, The French Chef, produced from 1963-1973, was not taped in her actual kitchen. The shows were taped in a variety of studio kitchens in the Boston area, the first being a makeshift studio test kitchen in the basement of the Boston Edison electric company.

What you're referring to is her work from the 1990's, such as "Baking With Julia" and "Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home" (the hilarious comic duo of Jacques Pepin and Julia), which was mostly filmed in Child's actual kitchen in Cambridge.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Palladian showed a picture of his kitchen here once (i cant find it, but trust me he did)

It was palatial ;)

Palladian said...

And "Julie and Julia" is a meretricious piece of trash. The entire premise, from the original "stunt" blog written by the overbearing narcissistic nobody Julie Powell to Meryl Streep mugging around in Julia Child drag, makes me nauseous. And now, unfortunately, Powell has permanently hitched her empty cart to Child's wondrous horse and managed to make herself wealthy and famous on the basis of a great woman's actual achievements. Actually a perfect allegory for contemporary America, right down to the profanity and emotional neediness.

Streep's performance is also somewhat overrated. I'm never impressed by actors who do impersonations of famous film and television personalities. It's like the movie "Capote". Yes, Seymour-Hoffman did a passable impersonation of Truman Capote, but so what? You can just go to Youtube and watch old episodes of Dick Cavett and do your own passable impersonation. So why watch Meryl Streep do a mediocre impersonation of Child when you can just go and watch Child's shows for yourself, and see how much better the real thing was, and actually learn something about cooking in the process?

And — surprise! — Julia Child read Powell's original blog and hated it! According to Child's editor Judith Jones (the woman who got Alfred Knopf to publish Mastering The Art of French Cooking):

...Jones says Child did not approve of Powell’s cook-every-recipe-in-one-year project. The editor and author read Powell’s blog together (Julie and Julia was published a year after Child’s 2004 death). “Julia said, ‘I don’t think she’s a serious cook.’ ” Jones thinks there was a generational difference between Powell and Child. “Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn’t attractive, to me or Julia. She didn’t want to endorse it. What came through on the blog was somebody who was doing it almost for the sake of a stunt. She would never really describe the end results, how delicious it was, and what she learned. Julia didn’t like what she called ‘the flimsies.’ She didn’t suffer fools, if you know what I mean.”

Powell, her book, the movie and its audience are flimsies, through and through. The only good thing will be if the movie and book make people go out and actually read Child's writing and learn something about cooking in the process. Then hopefully they'll see that there was so much more to Julia than what this Hollywood flash-in-the-nonstick-pan presents.

Palladian said...

"Palladian showed a picture of his kitchen here once (i cant find it, but trust me he did)

It was palatial ;)"

Ha, thanks Lem, but it's actually anti-palatial! It's the tiniest little windowless galley you could ever imagine, except its crammed so full of kitchen equipment that it's in danger of overwhelming the fabric of space/time and collapsing into a singularity.

Verification Word: brawp. The sound you make after eating a satisfying portion of Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignon.

Wince said...

As I said, I didn't know where the French Chef was taped, but the article said "[h]ere’s her famous kitchen, where so many of her cooking shows were taped over the years, and which she called 'the most loved and most used room in the house'".

I stand corrected.

Evidently, before Child's house was renovated the kitchen was dismantled and moved to the Smithsonian.

The original kitchen -- its counters raised for the comfort of the 6'2" chef -- is on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. It was shipped there after Child moved out of the home in 2001.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I did hear from a trust worthy Julia Child fan (he watched the shows) that Streep went over the top with Julias way of laughing to the point of making it cartoonish.

He didnt like it.

Palladian said...

EDH, you're right, Child's kitchen is in Washington and I recommend going to see it, although it's a little sad to see it sterilized and sealed up and not warm and alive with the sounds and smells of all the wonderful things that were cooked there over the years.

The absolutely horrible thing is that the Childs' house in Cambridge was purchased and is occupied by a family of repulsive, non-cooking vegans. I'm just glad they got the modern mortuary look in kitchen renovations instead of defiling Julia's old kitchen with their alfalfa sprouts and mashed yeast.

Palladian said...

A valentine from Julia and Paul...

Wince said...

Dan Ackroyd's parody of Julia Child says "save the liver"!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

you are right. i meant to play with the words Palladian and palatial.

vbspurs said...

Thanks for the heads up about the Giants-Iggles game. It's been AWESOME, one of the best I've ever seen.

vbspurs said...

wv: tosses! How does Blogger DO this?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

the NBC blimp shows Columbus Circle in manhattan.. why not show Rutherford's circle right here where the dam stadium happens to be..

dont answer that.

wv - cratime

vbspurs said...

OT: Have you guys seen the "creeper in my apartment" video (via Ace)?

It's like the Three Bears fable, updated for New York living. A guy wonders who is stealing his food and peeing in his sink. He asks his gf if it's her (heh). When she denies wrongdoing, he sets up a camera in his kitchen -- and I have to say, if this is legit, it's 10x more creepy than "Paranormal Activiy".

Cheers,
Victoria

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Fake..

She makes way too much noise.

BTW Vic, I raided your fav movies list for my Netflix.

Of all of them I have only seen Nights of Cabiria (1957)

thanks

wv - enend - but i'm still not sleepy.

Maxine Weiss said...

Relationships have a life cycle. They grow, they develop, and they either become static or die. Static can be strong and positive (as in someone you love and trust) or just ho hum (status quo), with every variation in between.

The variable that determines how quickly a relationship’s life cycle moves is the amount of exposure we have (to information) about the other person.

What is FB, essentially? It’s an information hose, it’s all about information exposure. Privacy is it’s core enemy.

What does FB do to your relationships? It speeds up their life cycles. It is a relationship life cycle catalyst.

I think when people realize this, that being a FB participant is akin to dramatically increasing the speed of one’s relationships, they will run from FB as they would to “FIRE!” shouted in a crowded theater.

[And before you think that this is good, that it's better to build and amass friends quickly, to identify and eliminate enemies with ease, ask yourself these questions: "Of those it took me a lifetime to befriend, how many of them has FB taken from me? Of those friends I have met on FB, how many of them do I really know? How many of them feel substantial to me? How many of them could I really substitute for those I have lost to FB?" I imagine the answers are too many, none, none, and NONE, respectively.]

It’s the mystery of others that keeps us interested in them. It’s what we don’t know about them and their lives that makes us want to know them more (and sometimes, yes, less). It’s what we don’t know about their week that makes us want to spend time with them this weekend. It’s what we learn about them in the natural context of living life that makes us want them to be part of our lives for as long as we live or never again. And FB destroys all of this…

There is no mystery to you anymore. With FB, too many people know too much about you already. Why would they be interested when they know everything there is to know?

[Worse is that FB allows you to fabricate a self that is completely out of context with reality, with your real life in a real world that is challenging and hard and ugly and beautiful and complex and wonderful; and, that false self does not and will not hold up in real life, neither for you nor for others who befriended you through its facade.]

In short, the more information you give, the more predictable you become. The more predictable you become, the less interesting you are. The less interesting you are, the fewer relationships of any substance you will have, and you even threaten the ones you do have.

In that sense it’s good that FB allows an unlimited number of friends: You’ll need every one of them.

vbspurs said...

OMG, the Faces of Eve is back...

Lem, good stuff! Glad I could be of some help to you. Let me know which one you end up liking most.

Cheers,
Victoria

reader_iam said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Beth said...

Victoria,

I saw the "creeper" video and it rings fake to me. This guy says he "confronted" his girlfriend about "stealing [his] food." Weird choice of words.

reader_iam said...

Ouch. That second paragraph was a grammatical mess.

Palladian said...

I made a little comparison video of Meryl Streep vs. the real and inimitable Julia Child, so you could see the mediocrity of Streep's performance next to the master.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Lem, good stuff! Glad I could be of some help to you. Let me know which one you end up liking most.

It would be nice if the more Althousians like yourself opened up their favorite movie list for us underlings ;)

reader_iam said...

Pondering whether it's worth fixing and re-posting merely for clarity of construction.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Bloody well done Palladian.

wv - phole - I'm with Palladian, watch the real Julia.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

It was a good post reader.

please do repost.

Beth said...

Palladian, that was good.

I enjoyed the movie, though, just for the Julia part. Though no imitation can match her, it was fun to celebrate her. On the subject of comparisons, I wonder if the director intended to make it so clear how much Julie and her 1-year blog challenge were to Julia's long haul project of studying, testing, writing and editing her masterpiece.

Beth said...

That was intended to be "how shallow" not "how much" - something got lost in editing.

Penny said...

Palladian, I LOVED that! I used to faithfully watch Julia every Sunday. Thanks for your efforts.

You said that was from the "Potato Show", and I'm wondering what it is she was making? It looks like a giant leftover mashed potato cake.

They were a staple in my house growing up, but my nan made them into little 3" cakes so that the flip required a lot less "conviction".

I don't eat a lot of potatoes, and rarely have them in the house, but whenever I go to the Amish Market, I pick up their fresh mashed potatoes just so I can make potato pancakes the next day. Add some chopped onion and parsley, an egg and flour, and you have a real taste treat.

section9 said...

Pshaw! There is no Global Warming. It's all an Albot moneymaking scam.

The proof? C'mon, Meade, you and Althouse can front us some lakesided Althouse bikini pics!

AllenS said...

Here's something from the Minneapolis MN Star Tribune:

Nostalgia was a cold thing for Minnesotans in 2008. An old-fashioned winter ushered in the year with five straight months of below-normal temperatures statewide, the first such streak since 1979. April snows were heavy - depressing, some would say - and many northern lakes were still covered with ice instead of anglers for the walleye fishing opener in May. Some migrating birds starved because the bugs they like to eat when they arrive hadn't been born yet. Gardening and farming started two weeks later than usual all across the state. The worst calamities occurred in late spring - a fatal tornado in Hugo and floods in the Austin area. As the year ended, heavy autumn rains and snow in the Red River Valley had people thinking ahead to spring flooding. Statewide, a deep snow cover held the promise of another "traditional winter" stretching into 2009.

Global warming? Not so much.